New York's rubbish revolution: Wheeled bins to combat waste's difficult situation

The American dream ended long ago — perhaps when European people began hearing about the prohibitive costs of food, education, healthcare, or renting a flat in the USA. Paid holiday? It's not practised there. Perpetually congested roads, weak public transport, fentanyl, shootings in public places: that's how teenage dreams of an ideal country died. Going there for a holiday — definitely. Living there — sure, there are benefits, but is the grass greener according to just stories? Probably not.

The USA may pride itself on technological or economic superiority, but it drastically falls behind in certain aspects. In 2024, the mayor of New York introduced innovations to the city—wheeled containers that will become part of the "rubbish revolution."

At a Monday press conference, New York Mayor Eric Adams demonstrated a plastic rubbish bin. He announced that by 1 June 2026, every building with one to nine flats would have to purchase an NYC Bin — a plastic-wheeled rubbish bin. The cost of the rubbish bin is £41, which will be shared among the flat tenants. Starting 12 November, New Yorkers must place waste in any container. This aims to solve the problem of bags piling up on the streets, spilling rubbish, and putrid odours. It might also reduce the population of rats, which until now have been able to scavenge quite freely around the unsecured food scraps.

"When you look at the billions of pounds of trash we remove off our streets annually, many people thought it was impossible that these babies here, the bins, were going to be part of our trash revolution [...]. We're only catching up to what other municipalities across the globe, what they are currently doing," acknowledged the Mayor of New York. Larger residential buildings are also included in the plan. "That's nearly 10 billion pounds of trash each year that we won't see or smell. They won't cut our sidewalks. They won't ruin our days when rats run across and out of our garbage. It is a real revolution. This is a rat-proof container and it's going to do the job," summarised Eric Adams.